Justin Bieber fakes retirement to promote new album

The promise that he will pack it in forever was revived yet again on Christmas Eve

Justin Bieber is a lot of things, but an ignorant media pawn is not one of them.

A cursory glance at his track record shows a history of the pint-sized Canadian pop star — or the powers behind him — not only outsmarting but using the media to promote whatever uniform pop product he’s peddling. Whether it be carefully controlling who he grants interviews to, leaking the story of a fake sex tape or to simply acting his age, in the end it all turns out to be a clever ploy to abuse the non-Beliebers whose schadenfreude mouth froth blinds them from the painfully obvious.

The most recent example of such a ploy came yesterday when, during a radio interview with Los Angeles radio station Power 106, the Biebs declared that, “After the new album, uh, I’m actually, uh, I’m retiring man, I’m retiring.” The audible shock from the hosts would soon be replaced by cheers and jeers from around the world wide web, with everyone from USA Today to The Independent UK to the Toronto Star, NME and TIME Magazine (yes, that TIME Magazine) popping retirement (?) headlines in the hopes of stoking their own page-view counts while readers delighted in a Bieber-free future.

But the joke was really on all of them.

As a “people in Bieber’s camp” told TMZ, he was just joking; having a laugh at their and every other media outlet’s expense. And not only did they fall for it, they fell for it again. That’s right, this isn’t even the first time Bieber has dangled his retirement.

In 2011, the then 17-year-old pulled the same stunt to considerably less fanfare. This time, however, the savvy icon learned from his mistakes and took his claims to a bigger audience, The results, as you’ll see in the links below, speak for themselves.